Communication between parties speaking different languages has both verbal and non-verbal components. To facilitate verbal communications, it is often necessary to use a third-party interpreter who attempts to translate the language of the speaker to that of the listener in a manner which preserves the literal content and nuances of the speaker's statements. During such exchange, both the speaker and the listener are provided non-verbal information such as body language, gestures, and the tonality/tempo of the speaker's voice. In training individuals to participate in communication through the use of interpreters, it is important to provide an environment in which the language of the speaker is unintelligible to the listener but which replicates the spontaneity of the verbal exchanges and preserves the non-verbal components.
Prior training techniques utilized a debriefer/trainee, a foreign language source speaker and a third-party interpreter speaker that speaks both the foreign language of the source speaker and the primary language of the debriefer/trainee. Accordingly, these techniques required the use of two participants that speak a common foreign language. In addition, an audience listening in on the training session may not understand the exchange when the foreign language speakers are talking during the exchange unless they also speak the foreign language.